Hows the tour going?
Great, its wrapping up now, weve got three shows left. Weve been here since the beginning of April, so quite a long time. The shows have been great though.
Why name yourselves after a fictional evil genius from China? Or his moustache?
Its really got nothing to do with that, it just sounds cool! Theres no real connection or anything, it just sounded cool at the time.
Tuned, low, fuzzy, riff-orientated I suppose.
Why do people call you stoner rock?
I dunno. We dont really write any songs about pot, I guess its just that sound, a lot of stoner rock bands sound like that.
Tons of stuff. For the Fu Manchu thing its mostly seventies rock and early eighties hardcore punk. Like Cactus, ZZ Top, AC/DC, Minor Threat, Black Flag, that kind of stuff.
The topics of your songs have been some strange things, like pinball, Bigfoot and poker.
Why do we have songs about pinball? I guess its just what we grew up around; we all grew up down near the beach in California. We just write about our surroundings.
How do you explain Bigfoot then?
[laughs] Thats the singer [Scott Hill], he has a big fascination with Bigfoot. Hes got tons of movies and stuff about Bigfoot.
This is your tenth album. Do you find it easier to write songs now then 17 years ago?
Yeah, because weve all been playing together for a while now, so we know what to expect from each other. We can write stuff that caters to each other.
How do you think it compares to your earlier albums?
We try to make things different every time. This time we have brought back some of the old fuzz pedals that we have used in the past. Thats kind of a similarity but we tried to get more of an aggressive sound and make it more like a raw recording.
How can you still play as a band after nearly 20 years? Any tips?
I dunno; I didnt think it would last this long. If you get along with everybody and you like what youre doing then it just kinda happens that way. If we had to force it or we werent having fun doing it we wouldnt do it.
You play a few covers by bands (Van Halen, Blue Oyster Cult). Do you think that they ever heard them?
The guys from Devo heard theirs, and they said they really liked it, but they said that we screwed up the last lyric. Which we did, cos were idiots. We didnt put much thought into it, just said "Lets cover that Devo song". We got to meet them; that was really cool. We read in a magazine later on that we screwed it up. They didnt say it was us, but they were like "People cover this song and everyone messes up the last few lines" and I was like "Oh Shit, we messed it up!".
article by: Danielle Millea
photos by: Danielle Millea
published: 07/06/2007 09:28
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Camden
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